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Category: Uncategorized
A well-executed SJW hit
This is what happens to people who don’t read SJWAL and fail to understand exactly what they are up against when they question the sacred Narrative. Rod Dreher chronicles something called “the Duke Divinity crisis”:
1. On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Anathea Portier-Young wrote:
Dear Faculty Colleagues,
On behalf of the Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee, I strongly urge you to participate in the Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training planned for March 4 and 5. We have secured funding from the Provost to provide this training free to our community and we hope that this will be a first step in a longer process of working to ensure that DDS is an institution that is both equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture. While a number of DDS faculty, staff, and students have been able to participate in REI training in recent years, we have never before hosted a training at DDS. Those who have participated in the training have described it as transformative, powerful, and life-changing. We recognize that it is a significant commitment of time; we also believe it will have great dividends for our community. Please find the registration link below. Details about room location will be announced soon.
Duke Divinity School will host a Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training on March 4 and 5, 2017, 8:30—5 pm both days. Participants should plan to attend both full days of training.
“Racism is a fierce, ever-present, challenging force, one which has structured the thinking, behavior, and actions of individuals and institutions since the beginning of U.S. history. To understand racism and effectively begin dismantling it requires an equally fierce, consistent, and committed effort” (REI). Phase I provides foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism. It helps individuals and organizations begin to “proactively understand and address racism, both in their organization and in the community where the organization is working.” It is the first step in a longer process.
ALL Staff and Faculty are invited to register for this important event by which DDS can begin its own commitment to become an anti-racist institution.
Workshop capacity is 40 participants. Registration is FREE to DDS employees and students.
Snacks, breakfast, and light lunch will be provided. A 7:30 am liturgy will precede the Sunday training for those who wish to participate. Child care can be made available upon request.
2. From Paul Griffiths:
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 4:26 PM
To: Anathea Portier-Young
Cc: Divinity Regular Rank Faculty; Divinity Visiting Other Faculty
Subject: Re: Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training–March 4-5Dear Faculty Colleagues,
I’m responding to Thea’s exhortation that we should attend the Racial Equity Institute Phase 1 Training scheduled for 4-5 March. In her message she made her ideological commitments clear. I’ll do the same, in the interests of free exchange.
I exhort you not to attend this training. Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual. (Re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history; I hope you’ll keep that history in mind as you think about this instance.
We here at Duke Divinity have a mission. Such things as this training are at best a distraction from it and at worst inimical to it. Our mission is to thnk, read, write, and teach about the triune Lord of Christian confession. This is a hard thing. Each of us should be tense with the effort of it, thrumming like a tautly triple-woven steel thread with the work of it, consumed by the fire of it, ever eager for more of it. We have neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it. Keep your eyes on the prize.
Paul
——————–
Paul J. Griffiths
Warren Chair of Catholic Theology
Duke Divinity School3. From Elaine Heath:
On Behalf Of Elaine Heath, Ph.D.
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 8:24 PM
To: Ray Barfield; Mary Fulkerson
Cc: Paul J. Griffiths; Anathea Portier-Young; Divinity Regular Rank Faculty; Divinity Visiting Other Faculty
Subject: Re: Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training–March 4-5Dear Colleagues,
First, I am looking forward to participating in the REI training, and I am proud that we are hosting it at Duke Divinity School. Thea, thank you for your part in helping us to offer this important event. I am deeply committed to increasing our school’s intellectual strength, spiritual vitality, and moral authority, and this training event will help with all three.
On another matter: It is certainly appropriate to use mass emails to share announcements or information that is helpful to the larger community, such as information about the REI training opportunity. It is inappropriate and unprofessional to use mass emails to make disparaging statements–including arguments ad hominem–in order to humiliate or undermine individual colleagues or groups of colleagues with whom we disagree. The use of mass emails to express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry is offensive and unacceptable, especially in a Christian institution.
As St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, regardless of how exquisite our gifts are, if we do not exercise them with love our words are just noise.
Sincerely,
Elaine A. Heath, Ph.D.
Dean
Professor of Missional and Pastoral Theology
Divinity School
Duke University
I didn’t have to read any further than this to know how it was going to end.
According to a source close to Griffiths, he has resigned, effective at the end of the 2017-18 academic year.
No word if he apologized or if he simply resigned under pressure. Either way, another manufactured crisis, another noble conservative scalp for the SJWs. And as for the saccharine cuckiness of the virtue-signaling Christians both in the comments and at Duke, well, even the devil himself would want to spit them out of his mouth.
Amen! I totally agree! There is lots of literature now on white color blindness as the new racism.
The Mary-Sueist of all Mary Sues
Daddy Warpig watches The Force Awakens again, and concludes that it is even worse than he’d thought the first time.
When first she meets another primary character, Rey saves both their lives, even in the face of his bumbling machismo which threatens to get them both killed. Then she flies a starship for the very first time (completely untrained) and—though a rank amateur—she pulls off several maneuvers Han Solo would have had trouble duplicating even on his very best day as a pilot. Then her and Finn spend an entire hour gushing over how awesome she is. Then she goes to repair the ship—no mention how an untutored scavenger from the back of the back of beyond knows how to service a damned starship, much less the Millennium Falcon, a ship which gave even an astromech droid (MADE for starship repair) the fits—and gets to yell at Finn because he’s so damn incompetent. And she speaks droid, AND she speaks Wookie. And she releases monsters to kill bad guys (which she thought was the wrong thing to do, but turns out she was mistaken as the monsters eat up all the bad guys. (This is the only time she’s ever wrong, in the entire movie.)) With the tough, criminal bad guys dead or running, Rey saves Finn, Han, and Chewie from certain death at the hands of the monsters she released. And she deftly repairs the Millennium Falcon—AGAIN.
This will not happen in Embers of Empire. I guarantee it. In fact, let’s provide another unedited excerpt from the first Faraway Wars novel.
“Your reputation for boldness precedes you, Lord Dawntreader,” Jesla said. “But this offense will not go unanswered.”
Dawntreader smiled. “Lady Haut-Estas. You took the words right out of my mouth.”
The young aristocrat forged ahead, undeterred by the implied threat. “Seizing my ship would be a gross abuse of authority in any circumstance. Now that my father has withdrawn our world from the Commonwealth, it amounts to an act of war.”
“Your father’s pretensions are of no interest to me,” Dawntreader said, unmoved. “But when his actions jeopardize the peace that better men fought and died for, he becomes my problem.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
Dawntreader fixed his artificial eye on her. “You know nothing of the assassination attempt that killed Senator Dra’s son?”
The young woman glanced down at the deck and shook her head quickly, confirming that he’d chosen the right line of questioning. He moved close enough to smell her perfume and lowered his voice as if confiding in a friend.
“Let me tell you what I know, my Lady. I know that your father is inciting the Independent League to open rebellion. I know he’s seeking military support from the remnants of the imperial forces scattered about the galaxy, and I know you’re serving as a courier between him and the various factions.”
“That’s not true!” Jesla protested. But her breathing quickened.
Dawntreader pressed her harder. “Koidu wields great influence in the new Senate, and Shuru Dra has my sister’s ear. She is going to be angry, very angry about the murder of his son. I expect she’ll call for armed intervention on Esto—unless I give her a reason not to do so. Can you give me that reason?”
Jesla’s cowed demeanor gave way to sudden indignation. She turned a withering glare on her captor.
“The Insurgency—what a farce you have become! You and your sister do not represent the whole galaxy, and even if you weren’t despised by half the planets in it, you’re not fighting an oppressive Empire anymore. You are the oppressors now!”
“My sister merely leads one of many Senate coalitions,” Dawntreader corrected her. “She does not oppress anyone.”
“Don’t be obtuse, Lord Dawntreader. What was once a popular revolution is now your sister’s personality cult. Oceans of blood were shed, and entire planets were lost overthrowing one tyrant! We don’t want another one! We didn’t seek to trade an Emperor for an Empress!”
Let them bake cake
Jews and Muslims are whining about not being able to torture animals in Europe anymore.
Belgium’s Wallooon region has voted to ban kosher and halal meats by outlawing the slaughter of unstunned animals. The environment committee of southern Belgium’s Walloon Parliament voted unanimously for the ban, which will take effect on 1 September, 2019.
Both Jewish kosher and Islamic halal rituals require the butcher to swiftly slaughter the animal by slitting its throat and draining its blood, a process condemned by animal rights campaigners, who argue it is more humane to stun animals before killing them….
The European Jewish Congress called the law, which will be implemented by September 2019, scandalous and its president Moshe Kantor told The Independent it sends a terrible message to Jewish communities throughout Europe that Jews are unwanted.
‘It attacks the very core of our culture and religious practice and our status as equal citizens with equal rights in a democratic society,’ he said. ‘We call on legislators to step back from the brink of the greatest assault on Jewish religious rights in Belgium since the Nazi occupation of the country in World War Two.
“Muslims are worried about whether they can eat halal food … in conformity with their religious rites and beliefs,” the Belgian Muslim Executive said. Countries including Denmark, Switzerland and New Zealand already prohibit unstunned slaughter.
If a Christian baker doesn’t have the religious freedom to not bake a cake, then an Aztec priest doesn’t have the religious freedom to offer beating hearts to Huitzilopochtli, a Satanist warlock doesn’t have the right to sacrifice a virgin to the Devil, and Jews and Muslims don’t have the religious freedom to eat meat from tortured animals.
If Muslims want to eat halal meat, they can eat it in Saudi Arabia. If Jews want to eat kosher meat, they can eat it in Israel. That’s up to them, that’s fine. But there is no reason for the Christian West to tolerate their foreign cultural traditions or to permit them to engage in religious practices that Westerners find distasteful, cruel, or harmful anymore. And it’s not the freaking Nazi Occupation if you refuse to eat a pepperoni pizza because you don’t like how the cheese was grated. It’s also informative to note that despite the Nazi card being played, the committee went ahead and unanimously approved the ban.
I notice that Denmark, Switzerland, and New Zealand have already managed to prohibit animal torture without proceeding to construct death camps. The fact is that banning foreign practices like this is an excellent way to encourage the peaceful migration of foreign peoples back to their homelands. It should be encouraged, especially considering the primary alternative. Because “It’s a Small World” is never, ever going to happen. When in Rome, either do as the Romans or leave.
As I mentioned in the Darkstream on the subject, “let them bake cake” is now my standard rhetorical response to all religious minorities whining about their nonexistent religious rights.
A heartwarming tale of the plight of migrants in Italy
It’s so hard to maintain the narrative when the very people on whose behalf you are attempting to tell sob stories just won’t cooperate:
Francesca Parisella was assaulted as she was showing viewers of Italy’s Matrix Channel 5 how migrants had turned Rome’s Termini Station into a temporary camp. Viewers see migrants sleeping outside the train station surrounded by trash. After a voice is heard in the background, the feed is cut.
The feed returns a few seconds later, with Parisella explaining, “We were attacked!” “What do you want? Are you crazy?” Parisella asks the migrant, before letting out a loud scream.
“Oh My God!”, states the host of the show, before instructing his production team to call the police.
The migrant attempted to violently assault both Parisella and her cameraman, but both were rescued by a passing taxi driver who bundled them to safety inside his car and called the police. The attacker was later identified as a 37-year-old from the Ivory Coast with no documents or residence permit who authorities had ordered deported back in September last year.
Now THAT is quality television entertainment!
A tradition, now lost
Fred Reed recalls Marine boot camp, circa 1966:
A recruit was standing on a roof at Parris Island in the burning sun at parade rest. His DI had put him there to work on the roof and somehow had forgotten him. A passing sergeant noticed, stared curiously for a second, and bellowed, “Git down from there, prive.”
The private didn’t move.
“Goddamit, git down here,” bawled the instructor, unused to being ignored.
Nothing. The private looked deeply unhappy, but didn’t so much as twitch.
Another DI came along and yelled, but nothing moved the recruit. He gazed desperately ahead, either deaf or crazed by the sun. A group formed on the sidewalk, including a warrant officer, a lieutenant, and, finally, a passing light colonel.
The colonel snapped his crispest order. The private stared ahead. The crowd conferred, decided they had a mental case on their hands and prepared to send for a struggle buggy and some big corpsmen. Then the private’s DI returned.
“Jaworski, Ten-hut! Git your butt down from there.”
Down came Jaworski. From parade rest, you see, the only acceptable order is “attention”. The manual of arms says so.
“You see,” a drill instructor explained to me, “a recruit’s in a place he doesn’t understand at all, and nothing ever works for him. Back home, he knows the rules. Maybe he’s a big dude on the block, got it made. Not here. Everybody’s yelling at him and he can’t ever do anything right.
“So he figures he’ll do exactly what he’s told. It’s his way of protecting himself. If something goes wrong, he thinks at least it’s not his fault. This is what a drill instructor’s got to learn — nothing’s too crazy for a recruit to do if he thinks it’s what you told him. And you really got to think about it. Otherwise you can get him hurt.
“One time in winter a friend of mine, Sergeant Grunderling, had evening duty at some building and he wanted to go take a leak. So he tells this recruit who’s with him, ‘I’m going out for a minute. Don’t let anyone in who doesn’t know the password. You got that?’
“The recruit says, ‘Yes, sir,’ so Grunderling relieves himself and realizes he can’t remember the password. So he hollers, ‘Minter, open the door.”
“What’s the password?”
“I forget. Open the door.”
“I can’t do that, sir. You told me not to let anybody in who doesn’t give the password, sir.”
“Goddamit Minter, now I’m telling you to open the door.”
“‘No sir, I can’t do that.”
“Minter, it’s cold out here.”
“No, sir, I can’t do that.”
“By now Grunderling’s mostly frozen and so mad he can’t see straight, but he sees threats ain’t going to help him.
“Please, Minter, let me in. I ain’t gonna yell at you. I won’t do anything to you.”
“Aww, you’re trying to trick me.”
“No, Minter, honest, I ain’t trying to trick you. Open the door.’
“You’re gonna yell at me, aren’t you sir?”
“No, Minter, I promise.”
“Finally, old Minter opens the door and Grunderling nearly kills him. But he should have expected it. A recruit does exactly what you tell him.”
Societies in decline are always shocked to discover that their militaries are no longer what they once were when they run into a harder, more disciplined enemy. Just consider Athens after attacking Syracuse. Or the Spartans when they confronted the Thebans.
Today’s Marine Corps may have more advanced weapons, but it seems highly unlikely that the changes in its preparation will prove to be for the better.
Mailvox: knowledge core vs convergipedia
A pair of relevant emails:
I teach a course for an online university where students are required to submit papers (with references). Students are citing from Infogalactic now on a fairly regular basis. I’m still seeing some Wikipedia cites, but I thought you’d be interested in knowing Infogalactic is being used by students.
That is an encouraging development. And Wikipedia is, by every measure, getting more expensive and less efficient. One 12-year Wikipedian with 30,000 edits to his credit even suggests it has metaphorical cancer:
According to the WMF, Wikipedia (in all language editions) now receives 16 billion page views per month. The WMF spends roughly US$2 million a year on Internet hosting and employs some 300 staff. The modern Wikipedia hosts 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much on hosting, has about 300 times as many employees, and is spending 1,250 times as much overall. WMF’s spending has gone up by 85% over the past three years.
Sounds a lot like cancer, doesn’t it? For those readers who were around three years ago, did you notice at the time any unmet needs that would have caused you to conclude that the WMF needed to increase spending by $30 million dollars? I certainly didn’t.
From 2005 to 2015, annual inflation in the US was between 1% and 3% per year, and cumulative inflation for the entire decade was 21.4%—far less than the increase in WMF spending. We are even metastasizing the cancer by bankrolling local chapters, rewarding them for finding new ways to spend money.
Nothing can grow forever. Sooner or later, something is going to happen that causes the donations to decline instead of increase.
I wonder what that might be? Join the Burn Unit and the Alt-Tech Revolution here.
I should also mention that due to corporate demand, we are going to be putting together an Infogalactic Consult branch to help organizations make the change from the wikimedia engine to DONTPANIC for their internal wikis, or even just to make their existing wikis more functional and efficient. If you have a need for this, feel free to get in touch.
Darkstream: no vindication for the establishment
Even the media recognizes that there has been a massive shift in the political divide in Europe, as in the USA, from Classical Liberal vs Socialist to Nationalist vs Globalist.
A Le Pen loss, however, will hardly be a knockout blow for populism — or a ringing vindication of the establishment.
If anything, the French campaign has solidified the new fracture lines in modern politics, which bear little relation to the relatively modest differences marking the old left-right divide. Instead, the choice voters face on Sunday illustrates the profound new chasm in the West: between those who favor open, globalized societies and others who prefer closed, nationalized ones.
“What’s the common ground between Macron and Le Pen? There is none. What we’re seeing is historic: a choice between two completely different modes of organizing a society,” said Madani Cheurfa, a professor of politics at Paris’s Sciences Po.
This transcontinental political transition is still much closer to the beginning than it is to the end. I discuss this in more detail in my post-French election Darkstream.
Too soon for France
The results of the French election will be announced soon, and I expect the globalists and their pet media to celebrate Macron’s victory in much the same way that they did when Golden Dawn was defeated in Greece and the Freedom Party was defeated in Austria. But they shouldn’t, nor should nationalists despair in the least, because this is not the election cycle in which Europe’s nationalists were expected to come to power.
I wrote this in 2015. It still applies today:
The Fascists and the National Socialists came to power in the 1930s because they were the most credible options available to the Italian and German publics at the time. Don’t confuse the beginnings with the ends; 1933 was not 1941 or even 1939. Fascists were not elected with the idea that they would throw in with German imperialism (it is usually forgotten that Mussolini was an ally of France and Great Britain and only threw in with Germany after Great Britain betrayed Italian interests), and the National Socialists were not elected because they promised they would invade the Soviet Union, slaughter the Jews in Eastern Europe, and get Germany into a war with the USA.
One can’t learn anything useful about the future prospects of revolutionary parties by what other revolutionary parties did AFTER they came to power, one can only learn about their prospects by looking at what the other parties were doing BEFORE they came to power.
The worst thing about the established anti-nationalist European parties is that they have failed so spectacularly that even the violently murderous anti-immigrant parties will be preferred to them by even the most sane and civilized elements of the electorate. In a time of invasion, it doesn’t matter how dangerous the only party willing to defend you might be, what matters is that they are the only ones willing to defend you, your family, and your children.
As for those who are historically ignorant enough to point out that Golden Dawn only won 18 seats in the Greek parliament with 7 percent of the vote and therefore will never come to power, I will type very, very slowly and point out that in 1928, five years before they took power, the National Socialist Workers Party won 12 seats in the German parliament with 2.6 percent of the vote.
Two election cycles. And then you will see an absolute sea change in Europe. And if the EU attempts to entirely abandon even the pretense of democracy in defense of the invasion, the change will come even faster. And harder.
What is remarkable about the election today is that the French people have already turned against the established anti-nationalist parties, rejecting both in the first round of voting. But while they are willing to reject both sides of the establishment, they are not yet ready to turn to the nationalists. In this, Macron plays much the same role as Trump; he is a nominal outsider who, despite his elite connections, was not a player in either establishment party.
Macron will fail abysmally, of course, which is why I expect the Front National, possibly led by Marine Le Pen’s more telegenic niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, to come to power in the next election cycle.
Americans who cannot fathom this reluctance to vote for the nationalists in light of the events in Paris and Nice would do well to recall their own history. Did Americans turn against immigration, foreign interference, and the establishment parties immediately after 9/11? Of course not. It took 15 years, and three full presidential cycles, before they were ready to turn to the God-Emperor, and even then it was a close-run thing.
National electorates are like very large ships. It takes them a while to change direction. But, once they genuinely turn – and I am not counting choosing one color faction of the bi-factional ruling party instead of the other – that’s when real and substantive change can take place.
Of course, I could be wrong. And if I am wrong, and Marine Le Pen does manage to pull of an upset today, that will send a absolutely cataclysmic message to the masters of the collapsing European Union.
UPDATE: The current count shows 61 percent to Macron and 39 percent to Le Pen.
When rhetoric doesn’t work
As I pointed out in SJWAL, the best rhetoric is based in truth. Conversely, the worst and least effective rhetoric is based in falsehood and posturing to uphold an obviously false narrative. In light of which observation, the following exchange on The Zman’s blog struck me as more than a little amusing.
First, a wounded libertarian tried to play a rhetorical fast one by striking a superior pose and resorting to a common meme:
I’ve reading some of your anti-libertarian rants lately. And the phrase that comes to mind is:
“show me on the doll where the mean libertarian touched you”.
Seriously – pretty much every person you’ve ascribed libertarian leanings to in your recent columns – with the exception of Charles Murray – is somebody I have NEVER heard of before , and I’ve been reading libertarian literature and columnists for a good 15-20 years now.
I’m starting to think this whole ascribing “libertarian” leanings to a bunch is another episode of that long running mini-series: “Look at me – I’m a conservative and I don’t know what the &%$! conservatism is”.
Previous seasons have given us a bunch of conservatives who filled up the Republican party with Neo-conservatives.
Apparently nobody went to look up what “neo” means.
Looks like we might be playing the same game again – except this time we’ve got a bunch of liberals calling themselves libertarians. Apparently because the words begin with “lib” everybody stopped thinking it out and thinks they’re one and the same.
The Zman didn’t need to respond, because the commenter’s pretensions were punctured, and his rhetoric was destroyed, by a single question from another commenter.
You’ve never heard of Reason magazine and Nick Gillespie?
That made me laugh. What sort of “libertarian” who has been “reading libertarian literature and columnists for a good 15-20 years now” is unfamiliar with the #1 libertarian magazine and what was ranked the #4 libertarian site back in 2012. Of course, the sad state of libertarianism can probably be best understood by the realization that this very site was ranked #51 that year. Or by simply reflecting upon the last two Libertarian presidential campaigns.
It’s over. Let reason – and Reason – be silent when observation and experience gainsay its theories.
What libertarians need to ask themselves are these two questions: One, is my ideal of maximizing liberty in my society, the human society in which I actually live, presently dependent upon the core libertarian ideas of the Non-Aggression Principle and the Sovereign Individual? And, two, at this particular moment in history, do those core libertarian dogmas tend to expand or to reduce human liberty in my society?